Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.52LIKELY
Disgust
0.48UNLIKELY
Fear
0.16UNLIKELY
Joy
0.48UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.52LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.55LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.61LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.8LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.74LIKELY
Extraversion
0.34UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.81LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.58LIKELY

Tone of specific sentences

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
! Introduction
While in college, I worked at a drive-thru coffee shop in Southern California.
I remember one particular night when our phone rang.
I answered and a man said in a panic that he'd lost his ring.
He was trying to retrace his steps and asked me to go outside and see if it had slipped off when he had come through our drive-thru.
I took the handheld phone and went outside to look around.
A man was standing nearby and asked what I was doing, so I told him I was looking for a ring that someone had lost.
Imagine my surprise when he slowly opened the palm of his hand and showed me a shiny diamond ring!
I told him I was on the phone with the owner of the ring, but the man said it belonged to him now; he wouldn't turn it over.
I asked him if he could wait until the owner returned, but he said he was a grocery truck driver on his way to Arizona, and had to leave immediately.
I explained the grim situation to the man on the phone, and he said the ring was very important to him.
He asked me if I could just pay for the ring somehow, and then the owner would pay be back, along with $200 extra for the trouble it had caused me.
When I asked how much it was worth, he said $1000.
I said, "I don't have that kind of money!"
Then he asked, "Couldn't you just take it out of the register?"
Suddenly, I got a gut-wrenching feeling.
It occurred to me that things may not be as they seemed.
I apologized and said there was nothing more I could do to help, and hung up the phone.
As the "truck-driver" walked away, I decided to watch him from a distance to see where he went.
About 200 yards away, I saw a car pull up, pick up the man, and speed off.
The whole thing had been a scam.
Things are not always as they seem.
Con artists and identity thefts abound.
We must all stay on the alert.
In the same way, there are false teachers prowling about, looking for their next victim.
On more than one occasion, Paul had to deal with these false teachers.
But in some churches, there was a surprising twist.
Enemies of the gospel would accuse /Paul/ of being the false teacher and the con artist.
"This man was no apostle," the false teachers would say.
Otherwise, why did he leave town so fast?
And why was he asking for money?
This week and next week, I'd like to talk to you about leadership.
In this passage, we see a description of biblical leadership so that we will know what kind of leaders we need at our church as well.
Let me share with you this morning *THREE LAWS OF LEADERSHIP* from our text...
!
Lead with Boldness
1 Thessalonians 2:1–2 says "For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain.
But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict."
On his second journey, God called Paul to leave Troas and sail over to Neapolis, which was the port, and then go inland just a short distance -- maybe about 10 miles -- to a large city called Philippi.
Paul and Silas were in Philippi.
This is described in Acts chapter 16.
It says that God "open the heart" of a lady named Lydia.
I love that description God "opened the heart."
We should pray for our unbelieving family and friends, "God, would you open the heart of somebody that has a closed heart right now?"
Those who have been rejecting the gospel seem hardhearted, but God can open their hearts to make them receptive, to make them open to the truth.
And that's what God does for Lydia there.
Lydia shares the gospel with her household, and her entire family is saved and baptized.
It says that Paul and the missionary team are preaching the gospel in the synagogue and in the community there in Philippi, when lo and behold a slave girl begins to taunt and ridicule and to say, "These men are servants of the Most High God." You'd think this is good thing but it's actually a distraction to their ministry.
So Paul gets fed up with this girl disruptive and confusing and he actually just says to the demon "Get out of this girl!"
Paul rescues this the slave girl from demonic possession, but the slave owner wasn't so happy about that because this girl had been a fortuneteller.
She had been using Satanic powers to tell the future, and the owner was making a good profit off of it.
Now suddenly, the demon is gone, the girl is just normal again, and she's in her right mind and the owner is outraged.
So he begins to spread all kind of hatred and bitterness and the whole city erupts over these newcomers who come into town and are causing all kind of disruption.
Everything was fine until Paul and Silas show up!
So the mob arrests Paul and Silas, they strip off their clothes, they take rods, and they begin to beat them over and over and over again.
Then, when they have no more strength, they drag them into the prison - into the inner dungeon of the prison - of Philippi.
Friend this was not a place you want to be - dirty, disgusting.
Already they are bruised and bloodied, barely breathing at all, and now they're inside of the cell having no idea what could happen next.
For all they know, they will be executed tomorrow morning.
But you remember what it says in Acts 16? Silas and Paul in stocks, began to sing "It is Well...With my Soul."
OK, well that song hadn't been written yet, but they were /singing praises to God/ while in chains and shackles and stocks!
And then there about midnight, there was an earthquake.
The whole jail was shaking, the chains break off, Paul and Silas can go.
And you remember there's this jailer in Philippi who takes his sword out to slice off his head or kill himself.
"Wait sir!"
They yell.
Were still here.
We haven't gone anywhere.
He ask, "What must I do to be saved?"
So they share the gospel with the Philippian jailer, he believes, and they share the gospel with his family.
The next day, they leave the city.
I give all this background because there's been some great setbacks but there's also been some great victories.
And a church has been planted, starting with people like Lydia and her family and this jailer and his family.
And all of a sudden you have a core group to start a new gospel work in a new city that had never heard about Jesus Christ before.
There was a lot of persecution that next day Paul and Silas had to leave Philippi and it says here in verse two that they were "shamefully treated" at Philippi.
They were not treated as Roman citizens.
They didn't even get the rights that they had legally.
They were shamefully treated at Philippi.
But as they rode out of the town of Philippi, Paul and Silas and the other missionaries didn't have a conference and say, "Okay guys, we've got to rethink our strategy here.
What can we do to be more appealing to the crowds.
Maybe we need to rethink this.
Maybe we can we can spice it up and dress it up a little more so that people will be more welcoming to us.
No. What they did is they went into the next city and they preached the gospel again and they started all over again with the message of the cross.
So on the map, you can see they move from Philippi, briefly going through Amphipolis and Apollonia, and the look at this next city over here to the west: Thessalonica.
Just a few days after leaving Philippi, with all the memories fresh with their wounds literally still scabbed up and healing, they go into a new city and they start the preaching all over again.
It says that "though they suffered already as you know we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict."
And yes, there was conflict in Thessalonica, just like there had been in Philippi before that.
"Boldness."
I like how the NIV translates this, "we dared to tell you the gospel."
Sometimes sharing the gospel is a very daring and dangerous thing to do, but they were faithful.
They were bold.
And what does it say they were bold to declare?
The gospel.
They were bold to go back to that same message that everybody needs to hear: that we were created by God perfect, loving, obedient, in fellowship with God.
But that man and woman in the Garden sinned against God, and rebelled against God, and all of us now are unrighteous.
All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.
All of us deserve God's punishment because He is a good, and a holy, and righteous God.
God has to judge and punish us for our sins.
We need to be reminded of what Ryan prayed a few moments ago: that we deserve God's judgment.
We were blind and in darkness without hope.
And yet God sent his son Jesus Christ to come into this world and rescue us from our sin to pluck us out of the wrath of God, and to give us eternal life, that all would believe on his death on the cross and turn from their sins and see that Jesus rose up on the third day.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9